


The Dark Fairy

by peacensafety



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Dark Fairy, F/M, Fae!Claudia, Mildly Dubious Consent, mature themes, swinging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-27
Updated: 2013-09-27
Packaged: 2017-12-27 19:25:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/982685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacensafety/pseuds/peacensafety
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claudia is a Dark Fairy who marries the Sheriff on a whim, and finds it all great fun until she meets Peter Hale, a student at the prestigious Beacon Hills Academy where she works as the rich boys' mechanic for their over-priced cars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dark Fairy

**Author's Note:**

> This is pretty dark, it will possibly put some of the adult characters that you love in very dark places. This is Claudia's POV, so the kids are kind of all side-characters. 
> 
> I'm not sure I like where I went with this, a lot of these themes are squicky to me. It's rated Explicit though, and not all because of the sex scene or the references to sex. Claudia kind of comes off a bit antisocial.

“It’s just for a little while, John,” Claudia stared into her husband’s very blue eyes. He always looked at her so affectionately, and Claudia knew that she had chosen correctly when she told him ‘yes’ five years ago.

“I don’t know, ‘Dia,” John sighed, pulling her head into his shoulder. “I’m not sure you need to be around those adolescent boys like that.”

“Deaton said I’d rarely ever see them anyway,” Claudia protested. “I’ll be in the garage most of the day, and you know that the work will be easy for me. I’m good at this, and it’ll mean that you don’t have to take that second job.”

John looked terribly upset though. “I promised your dad I would take care of you, and Stiles…”

“Stiles starts first grade tomorrow,” Claudia stated. “I’ll be out of work by the time he gets out of school, so I’ll be home before he will.”

“I still think he’s too young to start first grade…” John looked over at their child, who was almost five years old and sitting on the couch holding a book that was almost twice as big as he was. 

“The teachers think it’s the best thing for him,” Claudia sniffed a little. “He’s excited about going to school, John, and the counselor at your job agrees.”

“Fine,” John said. “I know it will make you happier, anyway. I’m proud of you, you know that? Even if you were to stay at home, but I know you feel better working around machines.”

Claudia smiled. “Thank you, you precious man.”

John kissed her lips a few times. “I’ll get Stiles ready for school in the morning, though, okay? You just concentrate on getting ready for work. And don’t let those rich boys flirt with you. I’m still a deputy and legally obligated to carry a gun, okay?”

Claudia laughed. “Don’t threaten the lives of teenage boys, John, it’s not necessary. They aren’t even going to see me.”

And with that, Claudia climbed into her Jeep and drove to Beacon Hills Academy.

It was a private boy’s boarding school, grades 1-12, and there was no way that she and John could afford to send Stiles there, not without Claudia pulling income in from her family and it was kind of hard to find a place that would exchange fairy gold for the United States Dollar. Deaton was more than happy to give her a job there, knowing what she was and knowing she wouldn’t have any papers to prove who she was, and Claudia loved knowing that she can be like all the other human women and have a job in a place where no one would deal directly with her and she could work with metal, just like all her ancestors before her. After all, it’s not like humans will hire a Dark Fairy without sufficient paperwork to prove that she was a United States Citizen, and explaining all of that to John is more than she can handle. He’s a good human, charming enough to convince her father, the Dark Smith, that he could support her in the human world, even if he just thought that her family were reclusive and strange Polish human people. 

It was working though, the marriage, having Stiles, going through the motions of daily life. When she met John, completely on accident because in the hundreds of years she’s spent traveling from forest to forest in this realm she hasn’t encountered many humans at all, she just felt that it was right to go with him. It wasn’t like she loved him, although she knew that he loved her, because it wasn’t like her kind could exactly fall in love as her father used to joke. Her parents never loved each other, and after her birth she had been sent to her father’s house when it was clear that she had the same immunity to metal that her father had, and that she could call it and manipulate it however she wanted to. Her mother didn’t love her, although sometimes Claudia thought that maybe her father was exceptionally fond of her, so love was never an expectation for herself. 

Life with John was an adventure, and she thoroughly enjoyed it. Having Stiles was the most entertaining thing she had ever done, and she was drawn to his light and activity in a way that she had never experienced. He was so amazing, her little half-human son, and she knew one day that he would love finding out about her side of the family. One day. When he was much, much older. 

Deaton met her in the garage, showing her a few things and after an hour he left her on her own. It wasn’t like he needed to explain which vehicle needed a tune-up or anything; she could smell those things on her own. She immediately set to work on the oil changes though, because some of the cars needed that more than most. 

All of the cars were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Claudia had never had the opportunity to work on such nice machines before. None of the boys knew how to drive any of the machines properly, so there were times she paused to straighten out a small part, usually in the transmission or on the surface of the engine, before she completed the oil changes. She found paper and kept a log on everything she was doing, and before she knew it the time to pick up Stiles had arrived.

Her entire first week went along that routine, graduating to tune-ups, doing a few re-alignments, cleaning out dirty air-filters, healing up a crack in the power steering column in one car, replacing spark plugs and detailing more than a few cars. Sometimes, she had to apply glue to some of the leather seats in a few cars (and from their smell, these cars almost always belonged to werewolves. She was surprised that there were so many werewolves at this school.) or once, calling to get a replacement review-mirror for another car (which smelled like old blood, but she didn’t think it likely that there would be a school that had both vampires and werewolves). 

Stiles loved first grade with all of his sixty pound body. He made a new best friend, Scott McCall, and Claudia had met his mother Melissa and was instantly fascinated with the human woman, as much as Stiles was fascinated with her son. They were extraordinary humans; Claudia had never met anyone who was so wholly accepting of anyone else in her life. Other humans tended to shy away from her, but Melissa almost instantly became her best friend which Claudia had never experienced before. They spent hours talking on the phone, and Claudia watched her seven year old son Scott while Melissa finished up night classes to get her RN, and they went garage sale-ing and consignment shopping together on the weekends. Melissa’s husband was rarely home, as he had done his duty with some sort of military and was currently studying at some place in Virginia to join the FBI, but Claudia never really thought very much about him.

Claudia and Melissa had a lot in common, surprisingly. They were both hated by their in-laws, for one. Melissa’s husband’s parents hated her for trapping her husband in a marriage by getting pregnant, and John’s parents hated Claudia because his mother recognized what she was, although she never explained that to Melissa. John’s mother tried threatening her when John introduced them, knowing that her kind would never love and she couldn’t figure out what Claudia was doing with a human, and the old woman hated Stiles with a passion. The good thing was that they never explained to John what was going on, although Claudia knew John had questions about it he never stopped loving her. Melissa didn’t have that luxury, to know why her husband’s parents hated her, and it troubled her terribly. 

So it seemed to make perfect sense when John suggested they invite the McCalls over for Thanksgiving, and then later Christmas. Mr. McCall said he wouldn’t be able to make it back for the holidays, and it seemed a shame to leave the two of them alone during a very important human time. John was almost a surrogate father for Scott at that point anyway, and Claudia loved how happy it made Melissa whenever he would include her son with his and Stiles’s activities. 

So they smiled as John made the boys a blanket fort underneath the dining room table to wait for Santa, even if they passed out long before he was supposed to come. Claudia had known the old black elf before, and she knew that the real Santa would probably visit the boys as soon as she and John were upstairs in their beds and Melissa was safely ensconced in the guest bedroom.

She didn’t expect to see the chemistry between her husband and Melissa, but it secretly made her smile that her friend could be appreciated for the wonderful woman she was. John caught himself smiling a little too much at Melissa a time or two over Christmas dinner, and he would look at Claudia with such panicked, apologetic eyes that Claudia found it amusing. She simply smiled at John, not at all jealous over the situation, and it kind of confused him and relieved him at the same time. Humans and their passions, Claudia thought to herself. John didn’t understand that while Claudia was beautiful and he truly loved her, he was going to respond to the human love in Melissa because that was human instinct. 

At New Year’s, Claudia found Melissa and John sharing a quick kiss, and Claudia laughed herself silly when both of them, drunk and completely surprised at themselves, quickly apologized to her. Claudia kissed them both, and told them that she loved them and left it at that. 

Her friendship with Melissa wasn’t strained after that. She simply smiled when John told her, if she didn’t mind, he would like to spend an evening with Melissa. Claudia offered to have the kids over at their house if he and Melissa wanted to spend the night together, and John didn’t know how to respond to that at all. At first, he was upset that she wasn’t more jealous of his time, but she told them both that life was too short to play silly games. For them, it truly was, and she wanted them both to be happy. It wasn’t like Claudia was going to spend the rest of her life with John, she would have to go back to the other realm in only a decade or possibly two, whenever John first recognized that she wasn’t aging. The humans called their arrangement swinging, and Claudia found the term interesting and comical. 

Her life was perfect, she had a loving husband and a wonderful child who was so smart, and she was fond of her job at the garage and Deaton was just negligent enough to be a perfect boss. 

The last year of her life as Claudia Stilinski, when Stiles was in the fifth grade and his teachers were urging them to skip him another year, despite the fact that he was only eight years old, was a thing that she could have never prepared for even in all her long years. 

Her father, who had taken the human appellation of Przemysław Tkaczyk (also the name she had insisted that they name Stiles, because Claudia thought it was hilarious), showed up at their house for a short time. Claudia had no idea how to react to that, but he waited until John and Stiles had gone to bed before telling her that he had seen a dark vision, urging her to return to the fairy realm. Claudia wanted to brush it off, but she knew that her father wouldn’t let her do so. Time ran differently there, and Claudia knew that even if she returned for the briefest instant, a hundred years would pass in this realm and she would miss seeing her son growing up. She didn’t want that, wanted to do anything to prevent it, but her father urged her to make the decision soon. He said it might be a year, or it might be months, but if she didn’t return he would never see her again. 

Claudia spent more time in the garage after that, calling Melissa or John to pick up the boys. They both found it a little strange that she had started relying on them more, but when either of them questioned her she just said that there was more work and she wasn’t getting it done fast enough because she felt tired.

And she did feel tired. She had no desire to go back to the fairy realm, where it was just parties and gossip and malicious plotting for power. She liked it here, where there was John and Melissa and the boys and her job. 

There were things to distract her from making the decision though, and she embraced them with delight. She knew she would probably leave in the summer, so she decided to enjoy life to the fullest before the celebratin of Lughnasadh in August.

Melissa had gotten her divorce papers from her husband, Agent McCall, and Claudia insisted that John watch the boys while she went to her friend’s house to get her drunk. This was custom in human culture, as Claudia had learned, and Melissa called in some of her nursing friends from Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital to come join them. They drank orange cream vodka mixed with orange juice as Melissa signed the paperwork with tears and laughter, and the other women brought gifts of vibrators and lingerie and one of them brought in an incredibly good-looking man who dressed as a fireman and slowly took his clothing off. Melissa grinned at Claudia the whole time, and when the other women went home they fell asleep in each others’ arms in Melissa’s king sized bed. It wasn’t sexual, but Claudia could feel how much comfort Melissa took from it. She liked her human best friend, and if no one knew that Claudia let in a family of brownies while she was passed out to quickly clean the entire house before Melissa woke up, then it wouldn’t hurt them to remain in ignorance. 

It was the werewolves at the school though, that her father had seen in his vision. She knew it as soon as she saw the specific two, an uncle and a nephew, and she reconsidered her decision to stay until Lugh. 

The uncle was eighteen, about to graduate from the Academy, and the nephew was in the same grade as Stiles, although he was the same age as Scott. They were the Hale family, and Claudia had learned a little bit about them even being as separated from the school as she was. The uncle’s sister, Talia Hale, was a mayor of some major city in Massachusetts. Their family was almost American royalty, stretching back to the Revolutionary War, and they were one of the most established packs in United States. Both of the boys were startlingly beautiful, and Claudia blinked a few times to find them in her garage. 

“You’re not a human,” the uncle said, after loading his nephew into the car that he bought with his own money. This was apparently a Big Deal, in human culture, that a human be clever enough to amass lots of currency. 

“It’s apparently common enough around here,” Claudia said, not able to take her eyes away from this wolf’s blue eyes. It was like staring at an on-coming train, or looking Death in the face. He was beautiful, but it wasn’t just the way that mortals were beautiful with that light shining out of them. Claudia wanted to touch him, and she had never really had that desire before with anyone. 

“I’m Peter,” the wolf said, and Claudia nodded, still unable to look away from him. She wanted to walk up to him and wrap her arms around him, wrap her legs around his waist and taste him, and she was shocked that every part of her body was responding that way to his presence. They both stared at each other, although Peter kept looking down at Claudia’s mouth and into her eyes, until the wolf’s nephew rolled down the window.

“Let’s go, Peter,” the boy’s soprano voice echoed into the garage, “We’re going to miss the plane.”

“Just a minute, Derek,” Peter called over his shoulder. “I need your name.”

“Claudia Stilinski,” she told him, the name she had chosen for this life. She would probably have given him anything he asked at that point, because she wanted him immediately. 

Peter made a strange, whining sound in his throat. “I’ll come to see you again.”

Claudia breathed deeply, inhaling his scent and concentrating on the way her body was reacting to him, the way he was so obviously reacting to her in his pants.

“I have to go,” Peter said, staring at her mouth and then back into her eyes.

Claudia nodded. She watched him pull away, and then her heart and mind came back to her.

What was she thinking? He was a student, and a member of a very prestigious wolf family. There was no reason for her to be reacting to him that way, no reason whatsoever. 

Claudia went to pick up the boys at school, shaken. She wanted Melissa to get off work, because this was not something she was ready to talk about with John. By the time dinner came around she was glad that there was no one to talk to, because reacting that way to a human high school boy was not acceptable. He was young and inexperienced and should hold no appeal to her whatsoever. She knew nothing about him besides the fact that her body reacted to him and therefore she shouldn’t be giving it any more thought at all. 

Claudia glanced around the table, John and Melissa were both working late tonight so she had the boys to herself. She blinked a few times, surprised that there was a female child sitting at her table, too. When did the boys pick up another friend? 

The girl’s name was Erica, and Claudia tried desperately to remember what the protocol was for having a child show up at dinner. She fed her, amused that she was arguing about superheroes with the boys, and remembered that she should call the child’s parents to inform them where she was.

Apparently, the girl had already called her parents, and Claudia dropped her off at her house on her way to take Scott home. 

It was good, that Spring Break, to have the three kids crawling all over her house. She liked having a lot of voices to distract her, and she briefly wondered why John had never brought up the topic of having more children. It didn’t matter; she would be going away that August, she reminded herself. It was probably better not to leave more than one child without a mother.

She debated sharing about what she was with Stiles. He might need that information as he grew older. Instead, she wrote everything down in a journal, and she was going to hide it from him in the attic where he refused to go. Maybe after her disappearance he would look for answers in her belongings, not that she had a lot.

Of course, she drastically underestimated her son’s proclivity to snooping.

“Mom, what’s this?” Stiles asked her on the Saturday before the end of Spring Break. He was holding the journal that she had already filled pages and pages of information in.

“Oh, have you read it?” Claudia asked, nervous despite the fact they were home alone.

“Is this real?” Stiles asked her.

“This is about what I am,” Claudia said, glancing around nervously.

“So this is about what I am, too?” Stiles asked. “It clears a few things up, like why I’m not at all like the other kids at school. I don’t think that it’s exactly safe to leave this around though.”

“I just… I need to let you know these things, Stiles. You need to know what you are before…”

Stiles stared at her. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

“I have to go. Soon.”

Stiles nodded, and then he took her journal out to the backyard and lit it on fire. She stood with him over the flames. “Teach me everything you can before your time is up?” Stiles asked.

Claudia nodded, and that was the beginning of her son’s training. 

Stiles came up with a plan to explain her disappearance, after he understood that time in the Fairy Realm was much different from the human’s. He knew she wasn’t coming back in his lifetime, so he said it would be easiest to tell everyone she had cancer. He got off school for this, and spent time with her in the garage at the Academy.

It was easier to not think about Peter when Stiles was there to distract her. The teenager had shown up at the garage a few more times, but when Stiles introduced himself as her son he looked shocked and stayed away for a little while. He started coming back a few weeks later, observing as she instructed Stiles in the human manner of mechanics, and when he wasn’t there she taught Stiles to use his other senses. He was strong and very gifted, and the metal almost jumped and shivered underneath his touch. His grandfather would have been very fond of him for carrying the Fairy Abnormality so strongly in his blood. 

It was one day, while Stiles was actually in school, that Peter showed up to her garage as she was bent over the hood of a Mercedes. “You don’t have to wait for me to be gone to show him that,” Peter said.

She almost brained herself on the hood of the car looking up at him in shock.

“I already figured out that you’re not human. You don’t even smell human at all, anyway.”

“I just… it’s safer that no one knows…” Claudia found herself stuttering.

“Oh, we werewolves have figured that out,” Peter grinned at her, his blue eyes flashing electric for a moment. 

Claudia had to tell herself not to stare, but he was so beautiful.

“You’re attracted to me,” Peter said, sounding pleased. “Not exactly everything that I wanted, but I can work with it.”

Claudia tried to shrug it off, “Mortals tend to fascinate…”

“No, it’s not that, you’re attracted to me,” Peter stated as if he were proud of it.

“It doesn’t matter,” Claudia stated. “I’m married to a human…”

“That doesn’t matter,” Peter moved towards her, backing her up against a work bench, “You know that we’re mates and we belong together.”

Claudia swallowed, “You don’t understand, I’m not…”

“You’re mine. You know it as well as I do. After I graduate, I’m coming to get you. Decide if you want to bring your son or not, I’ll take you either way,” Peter grinned at her. 

“No,” Claudia said, pushing the teenager back. “I’m not doing that to Stiles. I’m not running away with a high school graduate. You’re going to have to…”

“Live without my mate?” Peter asked. He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t understand, you’re it for me. The only one I will ever love, the only one who… I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life. I want you, I want to know all about you, you don’t have to work in a garage at a boy’s school if you don’t want to.”

“I do want to,” Claudia told him. “I like this life…”

Peter stepped back, and it hurt her to see the expression on his face. “Is it because of my age? You know that I’ll look older than you one day. I know that you don’t love your husband or your son, but you know that because I’m your mate we can love each other.”

“It isn’t the same for my kind,” Claudia said, gently. “We can go through life without love, it changes nothing…”

“How many of your kind have ever fallen in love before?” 

“Almost none. We don’t have those…”

“You could love me, and you won’t even give me that chance?” Peter asked. 

“I’m married,” Claudia said. “I have a son. Had I met you first, things might have been different…”

“Kiss me,” Peter said. “Kiss me once, and then tell me that you don’t want me, you don’t want us.”

“I’m not going to kiss a student,” Claudia stated.

“I’m eighteen. I’m legal. I graduate in less than a month. Kiss me once, that’s all, and tell me you don’t want me.”

The temptation was too great, because Claudia truly, truly wanted Peter with all of her might. She made a gesture with her hands, slamming the garage doors down to prevent anyone from casually seeing them and to demonstrate why Peter should not be fucking with a Fairy, and she grabbed the collar of his student uniform and just let herself have at him.

It was perfect, and she found herself burying her hands in his thick hair as he wrapped his around her waist, pulling her into his body. His mouth was sinful, and that was before he even opened hers to taste her. He pushed her up against the weight bench as she sucked on his bottom lip, his hands sliding up her body to cup and weigh her breasts with his hands. She wrapped her legs around his waist, felt the harshness of his erection sliding up against the core of her and ground her body against his, arching her back.

He pulled back slightly to turn her around, pulled her jeans down to her thighs and slid into her. It felt right, it felt like coming home, it was too quick and just painful enough that it felt good. 

Peter slid out of her before pulling her hips back, driving himself into her with desperation. He lightly bit her neck and shoulders, held one of her breasts in his hand as his other reached down to worry at her clit. They made no sound except for the exhalations of harsh breath, and Claudia bit his arm as she started cumming. 

Peter didn’t give up with her getting off once. He smiled and pushed her for another, and another, before she could feel him swelling up inside of her. She knew it was a werewolf’s knot, and she was tempted to not chant the ritual that would make her temporarily infertile, but she did it anyway because there was no way to raise a wolf child in Fairy. 

Peter gasped when she took it from him so nicely, jerked tiny increments to move the knot further into her, and made his first sound as she came again, clamping down on his knot. 

It was over too quickly, that single touch of heaven. Peter kissed her a few more times, sweetly, softly. “I’ll come for you, as soon as I graduate, I promise,” he whispered again. “You’re mine now.”

Claudia knew that she was, but she knew also that it wasn’t meant to be. She kissed him again, staring into his eyes. 

They cleaned off with the blue garage paper towels, and Claudia regretted wiping away his spunk. To carry a child made in love? She wanted that, more than anything, especially this wolf’s child. 

It became an obsession with her. She knew she wasn’t pregnant, but she wanted it, she wanted a wolf child from Peter. 

So she didn’t stop him when he came back again. She didn’t stop their frequent liaisons, and she justified it by telling herself that she made him no promises of forever. She reveled in the feelings of love, the little pieces of himself that he shared with her, the small gifts and smiles and kisses that he brought her. 

She felt elated, the entire time. She acted sick around John, and got off with Peter. She had never done anything like this before, and her Black Fairy heart was jubilant. Claudia smiled at herself in the mirror, even her mother would have been proud of her.

It wasn’t until the end of the school year though, that she finally understood what love was. 

There was a woman in her garage, the Friday before the last week of school. The scent on the air identified the woman as a wolf, which was strange because she was the first female wolf she had ever met. She knew who the woman was when they made eye contact, because this wolf had the same eyes as Peter’s nephew Derek. This was Peter’s older sister, Talia Hale.

She carried an air of command about her that was sure to intimidate other humans, Claudia was sure. If Claudia hadn’t been raised by the Black Smith, she would have no doubt that this wolf would intimidate her. 

“You’re fucking my brother,” Talia said with no ceremony. 

“Yes,” Claudia said. She was leaving in a little less than three months, it wasn’t like there was a single thing these mortals could do to her so there was no reason to deny it.

“You don’t love him,” Talia said, a little taken off guard by Claudia’s lack of guilt.

“I do,” Claudia said, with a bit of wonder in her voice. That she could love anyone at all was shocking, and she would shout it from the rooftops if she could.

Talia was confused. “You’re married, with a son, to a police officer.”

“Yes, I am,” Claudia said. 

“Will you divorce him then, to be with my brother?”

“No,” Claudia said. There was really no point.

“So you intend to drag my brother along until you break his heart when he realizes you will never be with him?”

“He has me now,” Claudia said, slightly confused. “I’m with him now, I love him now.”

“Human love doesn’t work that way,” Talia said. “Human love means forever.”

“Forever is a long time,” Claudia said, “I know, I’m young according to my people. Still a child, despite seeing almost a thousand years. Forever is impossible.”

“We don’t see it that way. Peter expects you to be there for at least the next seventy years. Can you give him that?”

“No,” Claudia said. “I have made no promises to him.”

“He won’t understand that. You’re hurting him by giving him this much.”

Hurt. Claudia didn’t want to hurt the wolf. She frowned. She didn’t like hurting Stiles, had no intention of hurting John, would prefer not to hurt Melissa or her son Scott. She felt actual pain at the thought of hurting Peter. “I didn’t know.”

“You need to leave him alone,” Talia declared. “Leave him so that he can feel something for someone else. If you’re not going to give him yourself for the rest of his life, then leave so that he can find someone who will. Peter is special, he loves with all his heart, and…”

“He’s my mate,” Claudia said, “Doesn’t that mean I should have some time with him?”

“You’re mates?” Talia whispered.

“Peter said that we were. I feel… I haven’t felt about anyone the way I feel about Peter. I think it might be love, but my kind… it’s strange. It feels right to have him near me, like time actually stops and…”

“A Fairy, in love with my brother?” Talia asked, somewhat awed at the thought. She seemed to think about that for a moment. “You couldn’t give him until he dies, until he passes on?”

“I have to leave soon,” Claudia said. “My father has called me back, so I have to leave.”

“Do it,” Talia said, tears in her eyes. “Make it quick. Don’t tell him good-bye. I’ll call him home right after he graduates, and leave while he’s not here. If you love him, you’ll do everything not to break his heart.”

“It will be a long time before I come back. It might be more than a hundred years here before I get the opportunity to come back,” Claudia explained.

“Make sure it’s a hundred years,” Talia said, “Don’t come back when he’s old and has moved on. If you come back early, make sure that he doesn’t know.”

Claudia nodded. She didn’t understand, completely, but she could see that Talia loved her brother, and humans had strange ways of doing things, so she would do this for Peter even if it made no sense to her. “You are sure that is best?”

“Yes,” Talia said. “I’m sure.”

Claudia nodded. This is what love was, she decided, making decisions so that the other person would be happy. 

She told Stiles about the change in plans for her departure, but not the reason why. She made love to Peter one last time, smiling when he knotted her again and knowing that now she had the wolf child that she so desperately wanted. She kissed him a little hard that last time before he went, and he looked surprised and pleased at the thought. 

She and Stiles faked her death for John and Melissa and Scott and Erica that night. It wasn’t hard to cast a glamour, although she felt kind of bad because she hadn’t taught Stiles that level of magic beyond the basic upkeep of his appearance, the softening of his ears and the dulling of his coloring. She let him walk her into the woods that night, and she made sure that when her magic faded his could take over and replace hers as perfectly. He told her he loved seeing her without the glamour, that she was beautiful and he would always love her. She never gave him the same promise, but hugging him and kissing his cheek seemed to suffice. His heart was fully human, she smiled, and he would have no problems in this human realm. 

She opened the portal, and her father was waiting on the other side. He looked fondly at Stiles, mostly because her son’s soul glowed brighter than most humans, and he gave the boy a token to call upon him if he so desired. The Black Smith was powerful, and he could cross through realms at the slightest whim. Stiles promised to use the token if it was needed, although he was sad that his mother couldn’t do the same. 

The portal closed behind Claudia and her father, and they walked back to his anvil, where her father talked animatedly about a new sword that he wanted to design. She placed her hand on her stomach where the wolf child was growing, and smiling picked up a hammer to help her father forge the next sword that would throw the mortal realm into chaos.

**Author's Note:**

> This is it, I hope you don't hate me. Come scream at me on Tumblr: peacensafety.tumblr.com


End file.
